A Review of Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Infinity Courts (S&S for YR, 2021).

Posted by: stephenhongsohn

 A Review of Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Infinity Courts (S&S for YR, 2021). 

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (April 6, 2021)

Length: 480 pages

ISBN13: 9781534456495

Grades: 7 and up

Ages: 12 – 99

 

Wow! Certainly, one of my favorite YAs I’ve read in a very long time! I’m here to review Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Infinity Courts (S&S for YR, 2021), which is the first in a larger series. Let’s hope we have at least three in this one because there’s still so much to learn about this particular world. The official marketing description gives us this information: “Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her—including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years. The only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there. When Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all. As Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human. From award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes an incisive, action-packed tale that explores big questions about technology, grief, love, and humanity.” What makes this YA so wonderful is that it explores the afterlife in ways that I haven’t seen before. The closest I’ve seen is the work of Gabrielle Zevin, who has a pretty unique version of the afterlife in Elsewhere (definitely check that one out). As the description points out, there is an AI named Ophelia that is trying to take over Infinity and eliminate humans entirely from that plane of existence. The issue that the novel brings up concerns whether or not humans or the AI have the “right” to kill the other. Indeed, Ophelia comes from the perspective that her artificially intelligent kind have been abused and exploited for a long time, so when she hacks into the afterlife, she figures that she can get a kind of revenge upon all those who did her and her peoples wrong. The humans have a legitimate beef to resist Ophelia’s machinations, but Nami is a mediator figure. She wonders: is there a way to get humans and AI to coexist rather than destroy each other? This kind of tension is absolutely instrumental to the novel’s success, as the readers are in for a wild ride. A couple of wonderful surprises toward the concluding arc set us up for another installment of the series. As I mentioned before, one of my favorite YAs I’ve read in a very long time! Go Akemi! Let’s see the next in the series sooner rather than later =). 

 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Infinity-Courts/Akemi-Dawn-Bowman/9781534456495

 

 

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